GSELEVATOR: 15 books you must read if you want to work on Wall Street

One of the most frequent questions I get asked on Twitter is: What books should I read if I want to work on Wall Street?

Mention Ayn Rand or Sun Tzu and you’re likely to elicit the NSFW version of the eye roll. And forget about Machiavelli. A Zagat’s restaurant guide would do more for your banking career than The Prince (although you should still read it).

So, I canvased my library and checked in with a few old colleagues and friends to come up with a solid list.

2. Meditations

Description: Here’s a sage perspective on the importance of humility and stoicism. When you feel like you’re at the center of the world, and working on deals that make the Wall Street Journal, it’s good to keep life in perspective. Or as Aurelius said, “words that everyone once used are now obsolete, and so are the men whose names were once on everyone’s lips.”

3. Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System–and Themselves

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Amazon

Author: Andrew Ross Sorkin

Description: This is the defining, fly-on-the-wall account of the financial crisis that reshaped Wall Street as an industry and as a culture. It’s rich with details, reconstructed from hundreds of interviews, but still highly entertaining. Read the book, but skip the movie. Lloyd Blankfein is played by Charlie Runkle from Californication in the HBO adaption.

4. Dark Genius of Wall Street: The Misunderstood Life of Jay Gould, King of the Robber Barons

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Amazon

Author: Edward J. Renehan Jr.

Description: Jay Gould was one of the great overlooked and most interesting of the robber barons, and one of the richest men of his time. Despite his reputation (newspapers joked about sealing his casket to prevent him from returning to raid Wall Street one last time), Gould was also one of first great philanthropists.

6. Liar’s Poker

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Amazon

Author: Michael Lewis

Description: Liar’s Poker is one of the most famous Wall Street books of all-time. It’s a funny and insightful account of life on the Salomon Brothers bond desk in the 1980’s – an unprecedented era of greed and excess. You’d be hard-pressed to find a trader who hasn’t read this book. I read it in high school, and immediately wanted to go to Wall Street (and incidentally, started out on the same Victoria Plaza trading floor seven years later.)

7. Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco

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Amazon

Author: Bryan Burrough

Description: An unbelievable story of the leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco, or as the New York Times says, “one of the finest, most compelling accounts of what happened to corporate America and Wall Street in the 1980’s.” This is one of those books you don’t want to put down. The HBO movie is a bit lowbrow, but still very watchable. Find it on Amazon>>

8. The Buy Side: A Wall Street Trader’s Tale of Spectacular Excess

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Amazon

Author: Turney Duff

Description: Imagine making $2 million a year. You’re on top of the world. But you’re also an addict. Imagine being so high, hung over, and irresponsibly late for work that you decide to throw yourself into a puddle, punch yourself in the face, rip your clothes, and then go upstairs and tell your boss that you got mugged. Well, that’s what Turney did … between stints in rehab. Find it on Amazon>>

9. Thinking, Fast and Slow

Description: How good are our decisions and how do we make them? Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman offers practical insights into how choices are made, as well as techniques we can use to guard against the mental glitches that often distort our judgment. David Brooks calls this book “the Lewis and Clark of the mind.”

10. American Pyscho

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Amazon

Author: Bret Easton Ellis

Description: It’s satire, but a weighty percentage of young bankers still idolize Patrick Bateman. You’ve probably seen the movie, but the book is still worth reading. Just don’t show up for your first day of work making Dorsia references.

11. The Handbook of Fixed Income Securities

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Amazon

Author: Frank J. Fabozzi

Description: I studied this book before my first Salomon interview and immediately had an upper hand on the analysts and associates who were interviewing me. Even if you prefer equities or M&A to fixed income, this kind of knowledge demonstrates a dedication held by only a handful of prospective bankers.

12. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

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Amazon

Author: Michael Lewis

Description: This is an absorbing account of the forces that led to the financial crisis from the perspective of the people who got rich betting against the US housing market. The movie was surprisingly good, but you should still read the book.

13. The Bonfire of the Vanities

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Amazon

Author: Tom Wolfe

Description: Your bosses probably have an affinity for the Wall Street lore of the 1980’s, and this is one of the novels that sums up the decade, but yet still doesn’t feel out of touch today in an era of social and economic inequality.

14. Heart of Darkness

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Amazon

Author: Joseph Conrad

Description: What happens to the so-called best and brightest when they are thrust into a morally opaque, alternate reality, with a completely different set of rules and values? It could be the Congo or downtown Manhattan.

15. Study Guide for 2016 Level I CFA Exam: Complete Set

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Amazon

Author: Wiley

Description: Getting a job on Wall Street is famously difficult, unless you have rich parents. Banks typically hire less than 4% of applicants. So get your CFA if you want to at least make it to the interview stage.